I'm sure many of you will have seen me voice how disheartened I am with the games industry at present. There is very little originality - it seems to be all about churning out whatever sells and making it look even slicker. Whether that's a sequel or just taking a popular concept and making it slightly different, it's getting boring. And one of the worst genres for this is the first person shooter. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed many a good shooter - GoldenEye 64, Perfect Dark, Half Life, Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament, Doom, Quake 3, Tribes 2, Unreal 2 XMP, Call of Duty 2 - all titles I've spent countless hours playing multiplayer with friends. It's all much of a muchness now, though - go around shooting people, in different maps with different guns... but all the games are pretty much the same. They all aspire to be more realistic... but it's mostly with graphical improvements or features such as blowing buildings up. All games are guilty of certain non-realistic traits - and one of the worst is running over a gun and magically transferring its bullets into yours. Today, I went to a friend's shop to try a game that's currently in development. I knew nothing about the game, except that it was made by a local company. I get there and, much as I found way too often at trade events, it was an FPS. Oh joy. However, the developers - a small indie - did a great job of convincing me that there was something different about this game. It's far from finished - they had to explain some features that they hope to appear in the game - but it is showing great promise. They explained that the game is influenced by Eighties slasher movies, which explains the darkness. The graphics are basic at the moment, but that gives it a unique charm - I rather like them like this - a cel shading sort of quality. Other elements, whilst not yet fully implemented, show promise. Two of these focus on dealing with non-realistic traits of FPS games - the HUD and reloading. They are putting the entire HUD on the weapons and the player's arm, so you don't have distracting numbers all over the screen. Instead, you have to hold your gun up to look at the information. As for reloading - it is not a feature in the game! You get a modest amount of bullets in your gun. When you're out of bullets, you must throw your gun away and find another. These features not only give you more realistic gameplay, but they make you think about how you spend your ammo - adding to the stealth element of the game. There will also be special abilities, which last a short time. On display was a cloaking device that worked quite nicely, and we discussed the physics of that - for example, how it will react when going through searchlights. Weapons sound interesting, too - there is to be the opportunity to use a banana as a weapon, for example! The game will be multiplayer only, with bots to be added if you don't have the required amount of players. The developers demonstrating the arm/gun areas where the HUD will be Perhaps this game is most impressive when you look at the developers - Domino Effect. This is a new company and Red Awakening is their first game. They consist of twelve people from several countries. It's great to see a young team who want to focus on gameplay and originality rather than whizzy graphics. It will be released on PC, probably via Steam, at an attractive price point, with the hope of next generation console releases, too. The game uses Unreal Engine 4. It's rare for me to get excited about an FPS - the last one was probably S.T.A.L.K.E.R back when it was in its original early beta form. This shows great promise, though. Here's a brief video I took. The discussion is about a bug discovered seconds before, whereby a player on the client standing still and moving a tiny amount would suddenly jump 20 feet on the server, then when he moved again would go back to his original place. There will be a kickstarter launched next month. You can find out more about the game (including video footage) at the following links: http://www.red-awakening.com/ https://www.facebook.com/RedAwakeningGame?fref=ts http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/08/...s-80s-slasher-horror-with-multiplayer-stealth
It was great to be there at the event and actually see people play our game. We know Red Awakening has the potential to become something great for players, we just want something that is genuinely fun to play! The projects ambitious especially for our first game, but we believe that with the hopeful help we recieve through Kickstarter we'll be able to have somewhere solid to develop this game full time (not in a library!). Thanks very much for coming and we hope to hear and see some of you at our next event in Coventry (Insomnia53) on the 21st Nov.
